As I am sure you are aware June 21st is the official first day of summer. Here in Missouri we had a very warm and humid start to this season. I believe we hit 97° with a heat index of 107°. Needless to say it was hot and unbearable. As many of you know I have been in a much hotter place, Iraq is about 130° in the summer and even higher at certain times. As this is a very high temperature, Iraq doesn’t have any humidity. Sweating uncontrollably we had to drink a lot of water. Many of the soldiers I was with suffered kidney stones. The water we had was full of minerals, and with the quantity we consumed it was a wonder why we all didn’t get them.

I have noticed another thing since the beginning of this summer, we haven’t had any mosquitos. Were are they? Here is my thought: I am just fine without them! Those evil blood sucking pests just cause problems whenever they are around. Although while I was there I never saw one. I imagine it was because there wasn’t enough water around to allow them to breed. Plus on top of that it was so hot we rarely saw any insects or animals. Most would only come out when it was evening. When I was in Iraq the Army gave us a pill that we were supposed to take once a week for malaria prevention our day was Thursday. This pill we took was very weird. It caused many to have very peculiar dreams. One of the dreams I had included a very large shrimp and a group of talking dolphins. If you can figure that one out, I would like to have some insite as to what in the world it meant. That is all for now I am tired after a long hot day.